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Columbia, SC (WLTX) – State Law Enforcement Division agents have arrested a man they say transferred thousands of confidential state Medicaid records to his personal email account.

Christopher Lykes, 36, of Swansea is charged with five counts of medically indigent act confidentiality violation and one count of disclosure of confidential information.

Agents say their investigation began on April 10, when the Department of Health and Human Services contacted them. The agency revealed Thursday that 228,435 Medicaid records were taken since January.

The documents included names, phone numbers, addresses, birth dates, Medicaid ID numbers and in some cases Social Security numbers.

According to SLED, at least one other party received this data from Lykes. It has not been made public yet who this third party was.

Note: Lykes “served as an executive committeeman of the Lexington County Democratic Party.”

The arrest of former state Department of Health and Human Services employee Christopher Lykes for allegedly releasing the personal information of over 200,000 Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries has led to an unexpected he-said-she-said brouhaha between the S.C. Republican Party and the state Democratic Party.

Yesterday, the SCGOP fired a press-release salvo claiming that Lykes was not a former member of the Lexington County Democratic Party Executive Committee. According to the Republican Party, Dick Harpootlian and his liberal minions “scrubbed” the official S.C. Democratic Party website of Lykes’ name. An April 18 screencapture shows Lykes as a Lexington Democratic Party Executive Committee contact, but his name is missing from an April 19 screencapture. Lykes was arrested on April 18.

“The South Carolina Democratic Party thinks they can pull the wool over the public’s eyes. Dick Harpootlian and his cronies need to immediately condemn Chris Lykes’ behavior and apologize to honest, hard-working South Carolinians,” says Matt Moore, SCGOP executive director.

But according to SCDP Executive Director Amanda Loveday, Lykes was not re-elected to his position as a member of the Lexington County Democratic Party Executive Committee during the county convention in March.

Meanwhile, Lexington County Democratic Party chair Kathryn Hensley notes that Lykes had been an active member of the Lexington County Dems. Lykes previously served as a precinct officer, but Hensley says he no longer holds that position. “For the past three months, I’ve been updating our records with new information and sending it along to our state party so they can update their records,” Hensley says.

(Republished from MichelleMalkin.com by permission of author or representative)